'DANCING MOGADISHU - SOMALIA 1972-1991' - After being blown away by a few tunes-probably just as you will be after listening to this- Samy Ben Redjeb travelledto the infamous capital city of Somalia in November of 2016, making AnalogAfrica the first music label to set foot in Mogadishu. On his arrival in SomaliaSamy questioned the need for a vehicle full of armed chaperones casually totingKalashnikovs, deemed necessary to accompany him to the radio station archiveevery morning, but then began rifling through piles of cassettes and listeningto reel-to-reel tapes in the dusty archives of Radio Mogadishu, looking formusic that 'swam against the current'.The stars were aligned: an uncovered and unmarked pile of discarded recordingswas discovered in a cluttered cornerof the building. Colonel Abshir -the senior employee and protector of RadioMogadishu's archives- clarified that the pile consisted mostly of music nobodyhad manage to identify, or music he described as being 'mainly instrumental andstrange music'. At the words 'strange music' Samy was hooked, the return flightto Tunisia was cancelled. The pile turned out to be a cornucopia of differentsounds: radio jingles, background music and interludes for radio programmes,television shows and theatre plays. There were also a good number of discotunes, some had been stripped of their lyrics, the interesting parts had beenrecorded multiple times then cut, taped together and spliced into a long groovyinstrumental loop. Over the next three weeks, often in watermelon-,grapefruit-juice and shisha-fuelled night-time sessions behind the fortifiedwalls of Radio Mogadishu, Samy and the archive staff put together'Mogadisco: Dancing Mogadishu - Somalia 1972-1991'. 'Mogadisco' was not AnalogAfrica's easiest project. Tracking down the musicians -often in exile in thediaspora- to interview them and gather anecdotes of golden-era Mogadishu hasbeen an undertaking that took three years. Tales of Dur-Dur Band's kidnapping,movie soundtracks recorded in the basements of hotels, musicians gettingelectrocuted on stage, others jumping from one band to another under dramaticcircumstances, and soul singers competing against each other, are all storiesincluded in the massive booklet that accompanies the compilation - adorned withno less then 50 pictures from the '70s and '80s.As Colonel Abshir Hashi Ali, chief don at the Radio Mogadishu archive -someonewho once wrestled a bomber wieldingan unpinned hand-grenade to the floor- put it: "I have dedicated my life to thisplace. I'm doing this so it can getto the next generation; so that the culture, the heritage and the songs ofSomalia don't disappear."